Then Jobs addressed Apple's biggest competitor, Android. Android has the backing of Google as well as a number of handset manufacturers that are taking advantage of the open source operating system, so the competition is complex. The proliferation of handsets from multiple vendors available on multiple carriers has certainly lent Android tremendous growth over the last year. While solid numbers on Android handset sales aren't readily available just yet, Jobs is betting that the iPhone's 14.1 million might just top them.

Still, Jobs has issues with Android beyond mere numbers. He first attacked Google's positioning of Android as "open" versus iOS as "closed." Google contends that being open is a virtue—open source, open (to a degree) licensing, open to many OEMs. Jobs feels otherwise—that "openness" leads to a highly fractured and confusing array of products with varying features, sizes, styles, interfaces, software versions, and more.

The platform, then, is definitely enticing to hackers and tinkerers that want to change the software or add new features. It's also appealing to handset manufacturers or carriers that want to add their own customizations or lockdowns. But developers will increasingly have more work to do to build applications for the various devices and versions of Android out there if they hope to target a large enough percentage of Android users to earn a living. And consumers will have to contend with carefully choosing a device/carrier combination that gives them the features they want or be willing to apply hacks and other measures to get them.